Quantitative evaluation of ageing condition of oil-paper insulation using frequency domain characteristic extracted from modified cole-cole model

Abstract

The service life of a transformer is determined by the condition of its oil-paper insulation. A modified Cole-Cole model was introduced to describe the frequency domain spectroscopy (FDS) curves based on the classic Debye relaxation model and thereby accurately determined the ageing state of the insulation of a power transformer using FDS. Oil-paper insulation samples with different ageing states are prepared under laboratory conditions, and a characteristic parameter is extracted to quantify their ageing states after a detailed investigation of the frequency domain dielectric properties of the samples. Results reveal that the modified Cole-Cole model, including the α relaxation components, dc and hopping conductivity components, can be employed to effectively model the frequency dielectric characteristics of oil-paper insulation. Furthermore, the extracted characteristic parameter from this model, τα, can be utilized in the quantitative evaluation of the ageing states of transformer insulation. A case example is discussed to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed technique in the condition assessment of field power transformers.